Racist Coverage of "Looting" after Katrina

Thanks to Xenon and Doug
9/2/05

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/themix/#24863

Racism on Yahoo News

"Racism still alive, they just be concealing it" - Kanye West

Posted by Matthew Wheeland on August 31, 2005 at 10:47 AM

Flickr user dustin3000 has some shocking screen-grabs from Yahoo's news service. The captions on two photos from flood victims show very clearly the sinister and subtle ways that racism thrives in this country.

The caption next to a photo of a young black man reads, "A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005."

Whereas, the caption aside a photo of two young white people reads, "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans, Louisiana."

What's the difference between "looting" and "finding?" Apparently it's as simple as the color of your skin.

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http://www.pandagon.net/archives/2005/08/busting_out_the.html

Busting out the tinfoil hat
Posted by Amanda Marcotte at 11:19 PM

I have an eerie feeling that the media is already spinning the horrific loss of life to Katrina into a story that is focused primarily on victim-blaming in order to distract from the massive failure to evacuate the city properly that is caused directly by inhumane BushCo policies. For a defense of politicizing events, read Shakes' Sis. Suffice it to say, I'm always puzzled by people who want to somehow depoliticize things because they are important--politics are those things that are most important. Granted, the politics should be pertinent to the discussion at hand and not just tacking your pet project onto the latest story, like making a hurricane about abortion. So I'll try to stick with that angle. One way or another, the discussion is going to come around to whether or not the absence of the National Guard in Louisiana and just general unwillingness to provide for what should seem inevitable--that New Orleans is in a prime position to get destroyed by a hurricane. And that's not really a path the media wants to go down, as it's all wonky and not kiss-assy enough for the modern major media.

So how to distract? Blame the victims.

Steve Gilliard, who's got a hella ear for racist dog whistles, lays it on the line--racist coverage like this is laying the groundwork for excusing away the fact that the dead are almost surely going to be disproportionately black because the poor are disproportionately black and because the poor are going to be the people who couldn't escape the city as easily. Atrios posted on the two nearly identical pictures of people taking things they need from flooded stores where the white people were described as "finding" and the black man as "looting". Directly before that, he rightly complained about the media whining about looters.

Taken altogether, this is what I fear will happen: The victims of the flood will be portrayed via racist stereotypes as criminals and idiots. This will predispose the audience to disliking them. Then, after everything settles down, a few right wingers will start implying that the dead brought their own fate on themselves by being too stupid and/or criminal to evacuate. This focus will distract the pundits from discussing the real issue at hand, which is why the fuck we didn't have the resources on hand to evacuate a city that has Hurricane Target written all over it. Before you know it, it'll be a wingnut bonaza of people both gleefully indulging in the most racist tendencies while simultaneously claiming that the only reason one might end up dead in a hurricane is because one doesn't have "personal responsibility". But my guess is that the people who are dead mostly didn't have transportation out of the city. Watch the media bury the truth of what happened so fast it'll make your head spin.

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http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=8625&sectionID=10

ZNet | Economy
Katrina Exposes Racism
by Lee Sustar ; August 31, 2005

DECADES OF OFFICIAL neglect, racism and the impact of global warming magnified the destructive impact of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and other parts of the South.

The mainstream media focused most on the big-money property losses--for example, the heavily damaged casinos on the Mississippi coast that took a direct hit from Katrina, and the tourist hotels in the French Quarter in New Orleans. But beyond the media spotlight are countless others who don’t have sufficient insurance--or any insurance at all--to rebuild their lives.

As in all "natural" disasters, a far-from-natural logic asserted itself: Those who had the least to begin with stood to lose the most.

Thus, in the Gulf Coast cities of Mississippi that took a direct hit when the hurricane came ashore, the big hotels were left standing, though heavily damaged. Other structures--even whole neighborhoods and communities--were erased from the map. "This is our tsunami," said one person, drawing a comparison with last December’s disaster around the rim of the Indian Ocean.

A last-minute shift in the path of the storm sent Katrina east of New Orleans, prompting city officials to think that they had avoided a catastrophe. But the day after the hurricane hit, conditions began to deteriorate rapidly. Parts of the levee system that protects the below-sea-level city from flooding gave way--apparently to the north, along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain--leaving up to 80 percent of New Orleans underwater.

With electricity and communications out, little was known about New Orleans’ poorest neighborhoods, other than that they--predictably--bore the brunt of the disaster. Rumors spread that corpses could be seen floating in the floodwaters. No one had electrical power--nor much chance of getting it for days, and probably weeks.

The worst may be yet to come. The waters that inundated New Orleans were polluted by garbage and debris. And when the floods finally recede, they will leave behind a breeding ground for disease.

The impact of Katrina was visible even before the storm hit land, most obviously in the images of evacuees lined up to take shelter inside New Orleans’ Superdome--mostly poor and African American people forced to go for refuge to a football stadium for lack of a car or want of money.

full: http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=8625&sectionID=10

Those wanting to help house victims of Hurricane Katrina can offer to do so through Moveon